Thursday, August 03, 2017

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 August 2017 - 10 August 2017

Sorry for not doing these the past few weeks, but Fantasia is kind of all-consuming, even more so than usual this year; really just no time to even take a morning/afternoon to hit the tourist spots, let alone blog about anything but the movies I've seen in the last 24 hours, some of which will be hitting this list in the next few weeks.

Detroit is the week's big opener, with Kathryn Bigelow taking on the Detroit riots of 1967; it plays at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

The Coolidge has a couple of classic thrillers on 35mm for their midnights this weekend, with The Taking of Pelham One Two Three on Friday and Black Sunday on Saturday. The Big Screen Classic on Monday is My Neighbor Totoro, and it gets a rare two shows that night - dubbed in English at 7pm and subtitled at 9:15pm. They'll also be lugging 35mm projectors to Boston's Greenway for their last outdoor screening of the summer on Tuesday (or Wednesday in the case of rain), when they'll be showing the original King Kong. Speaking of film, note that though Dunkirk was scheduled to have its last 70mm shows there on the 3rd, they'll be running it on 70 for most shows through Sunday, although it looks to be a DCP after that.

I'm the only person in New England to be saddened by the poor reviews The Dark Tower is getting because it's the work of Nikolaj Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen, aren't I? Ah, well. It features Idris Elba as the Gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey as Randall Flagg, but the trailer doesn't really make it look like the epic fantasy King's fans make the series out to be. It's at the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway (including RPX), Assembly Row, Revere (including MX4D & XPlus), and the SuperLux. That one took forever to get made while Kidnap took forever to get released; it was finished back in 2013 or 2014 but the guys that made it went bankrupt so Halle Berry as a mother trying to chase down the people who took her son just sat on the shelf. It's at Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere.

With screens to fill and some of the summer's kid-oriented movies not necessarily having staying power, Boston Common and Assembly Row will be running The Lion King for a week. Note that they will be alternating regular and sing-along screenings, so choose whichever seems best for your family and/or sanity.

Kendall Square is apparently only back up to 5 screens, but that's room enough to give two to An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, with former Vice President Al Gore catching the audience up on the struggles to fight and manage climate change in the past decade, with the election supposedly causing it to take a less optimistic tone. It also plays at West Newton, Boston Common, and Revere.

It looks like August is going to be packed with Asian films, both Korean and Chinese, for a variety of reasons (look at the uninspiring group of things Hollywood is putting out a few paragraphs up), and The Battleship Island arrives in the U.S. just a week or so after opening big in South Korea, with director Ryu Seung-wan reuniting with Veteran star Hwang Jung-min for a WWII thriller about Korean's forced to mine coal plotting an escape from their Japanese captors; it also features So Ji-sub and Kim Soo-an (the little girl from Train to Busan). They also keep Wolf Warrior II around on half a screen, for those of us that didn't get to see Wu Jing and Frank Grillo mess people up (hopefully reliable action guy Grillo isn't playing the evil white dude).

Both Apple Fresh Pond and Fenway keep Mubarakan around for matinees, but they actually get different Indian movies for new releases. Apple gets Bollywood romantic comedy Jab Harry Met Sejal, which is apparently not a remake of When Harry Met Sally… but a road trip movie as Shah Rukh Khan's Harinder helps Anushka Sharma's Sejal find the engagement ring that she lost in Europe. Fenway gets Darshakudu, but I can't find anything about that other than it being in Telugu. Apple also has a midnight screening of Rocky Horror on Friday with the Teseracte Players, while Full Body Cast does the shadowcast thing at Boston Common on Saturday, as usual.

The Brattle Theatre has been celebrating Robert Mitchum's Centennial all summer and for the weekend of his actual birthday, they've helped fund the new DCP of The Friends of Eddie Coyle, long considered one of the best Boston crime movies ever made, and will be running it Friday through Sunday. The regular vertical takes over as the work week begins with 35mm double features of Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison & Macao (Monday) and The Story of G.I. Joe & The Enemy Below (Tuesday). The "Recent Raves" series running on Wednesday pairs David Lynch: The Art Life with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Thursday's Agnes Varda film is The Gleaners and I. They'll also have a special IFFBoston preview of Good Time on Sunday night, and not only is it a pretty great thriller, but directors Josh & Benny Safdie will be there and they do a great Q&A.

The Harvard Film Archive was doing That Certain Feeling… The Touch of Ernst Lubitsch when I left, and they're still at it, with Anna Boleyn (Friday 7pm accompanied by Jeff Rapsis), The Shop Around the Corner (Saturday 9pm), and Sumurun (Sunday 4pm with accompaniment by Martin Marks). They're still doing The Complete Jean Renoir, too, with Toni (Saturday 7pm), Life Is Ours (DCP) & "Salute to France" (Sunday 7pm), and The Golden Coach (Monday 7pm). They also finish "The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun: Psychedelic Surf Films, 1966-1979" on Friday, with 16mm short "Bondi" playing before another surreal Australian film, Dalmas. All but those two and Life Is Ours are on 35mm film.

The Museum of Fine Arts has an eclectic group of films this weekend. The monthly "On the Fringe" show is a 35mm print of The Lost Boys on Friday, though that's the second film of the evening, with French black comedy Slack Bay playing earlier in the day and also on Thursday. They also have a four-film Inuit Stories series on the weekend, with Angry Inuk & Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner on Saturday and Searchers & Circus Without Borders on Sunday. Documentary The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement also plays twice, Sunday morning and Thursday evening.

The Regent Theatre has a special screening of Janis: Little Girl Blue on Thursday evening with post-film Q&A from Dave Getz and Peter Albin, founding members of Big Brother & The Holding Company, Joplin's original band which will be having a live show on the next day.

The Joe's Free Films calendar shows a lot of people playing Moana outside, with the most unusual item Zarafa at the Egleston Square Peace Garden on Wednesday.

Not actually back in Boston until Sunday, but I'll probably find time for Dunkirk on 70mm and The Battleship Island, and maybe some Mitchum or catching up on War for the Planet of the Apes and The Big Sick before they go. Looks like I might have to hit Cinema du Parc to see A Ghost Story because it came and went while I was up here. What the heck, Boston - a movie having an Affleck in it used to mean something!